The call finally came

By call, I mean phone call. Our local government has what I presume is a reverse-911 system, and they are so happy with it that everything seems to qualify as an emergency. From residents who go missing from area nursing homes to escaped jail inmates, if something happens then everybody gets the call. I suppose there’s an argument to be made that each of these cases could be termed an emergency case, but what happens when a firestorm is ravaging the county and the evacuation call gets ignored by most simply because they think it’s just another call about Fannie Mae getting lost from the home again?

Last night the call was the one I’ve been dreading: an official government request to cut water usage by 50%. Fortunately, these requests are still completely voluntary for us. I’ve blogged previously about how responsible local residents have already been in drastically cutting their water usage, even though our local water supply is considerably insulated from the effects of even the current extreme drought. I have little fear that residents will be able to achieve nearly the 50% goal, even if they don’t quite make the full amount.

Oh frabjous day! Kallooh, Kallay! (with apologies to Lewis Carroll)

With great fanfare from the entire Ubuntu Kommunity, Kubuntu 7.10 has been released. If you prefer stinky feet to fire-breathing dragons, you can use Ubuntu instead. Don’t forget about the other variants, either! Congratulations to the development team, all the users who performed testing and submitted bug reports, and just plain users who are willing to give any choice of Ubuntu a try on their systems.

Reasons to use (K)(X)(Ed)Ubuntu:

• You won’t be asked if you really want to perform that operation every time you try to do something.
• There’s no DRM: use what you want, how you want, when you want.
• You are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law (see previous point).
• You don’t need a key code, a license sheet, or a phone call to install and use it: that’s a genuine advantage.
• You can try it out without installing it just by using the Desktop CD; install it from the same CD when you are ready.
• It just works.

Happy with just a sprinkle

We’ve had sprinkles of rain throughout the night and this morning. To most people, that isn’t news, but in the parched southeast United States, it’s huge.

A report last night on the Weather Channel really drove home just how severe this drought is: as of this week, almost 38% of North Carolina is classified D4/Exceptional, the most severe rating for drought conditions. You can see a map of what this looks like at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln’s North Carolina State Drought Monitor page. Georgia is lucky, comparatively speaking. Only (only, he says!) 27% of that state suffers from the most severe drought conditions. Now take a look at Alabama. Over 50% rated D4.